


Som•no•lent

by evergreentrees



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Nighttime, One Shot, Romantic Fluff, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evergreentrees/pseuds/evergreentrees
Summary: After Ra's shows up in Bruce's study, him and Selina stay up all night deciphering the "cleansing fire" monologue. Pulling an all-nighter has its perks (i.e homemade pizza, warm blankets), but a lack of sleep makes these two more vulnerable.





	Som•no•lent

**Author's Note:**

> There's not enough fluffy babybatcat! so here's my contribution, hope y'all lovelies enjoy it. keep in mind I wrote this at 3am because I was binging season 4.  
> also, here are some songs I listened to while writing it: Up-Bedroom Mix (Sing Street), Where's My Love (SYML), Waking Up Slow (Gabrielle Aplin), Perth (Bon Iver).

“Dude, how do you sleep at night with Alfred snoring like that,” Selina joked to Bruce, motioning to the butler on the couch in the office. She was valiantly trying, and unfortunately failing, to lighten the mood in lieu of Ra's unnerving visit. 

Bruce hadn’t stopped looking grim since Ra’s had disappeared, and even though hours had past, both of them were still up and “brainstorming ideas” on how they were going to handle the upcoming threats, mainly what the crazy dude had said about Bruce. Selina glanced at the alarm clock sitting on Bruce’s desk, 6:47 am. Had they really been up all night? She moved her gaze on the desk to the empty pizza plates, which, thankfully, Alfred had so graciously made for them before falling asleep. Her sleepy eyes settled on Bruce, who was sitting on the floor next to his desk, a wide array of papers and files strewn out across the carpet. He would flip through some, then grimly ponder, then scribble on a pad of paper, then get up and walk around. Rinse and repeat. 

Despite his routine, Bruce actually glanced up from his work when Selina spoke, a crooked smile came through his expression, “It’s not usually this loud, only on days when he’s really annoyed with me.”

She gave him a sleepy grin, getting up from the pillow she was sitting on to move to his side, trying to decipher the papers he was so intently researching. 

Even though the night went by oddly fast, she was exhausted. Selina had fallen asleep on the office floor for about thirty minutes earlier in the night, and woke up with a blanket on her and pillow under her head. She had smiled at the gesture, but her thoughts were interrupted when she heard Bruce clanking around downstairs, along with the shuffling sound of papers ascending up the staircase. Alfred woke up for a second because of the noise, only to mutter something under his breath, then fall promptly back to the velociraptor noise that Bruce called “Alfred’s Bad Snore”. The butler had helped earlier, specifically for pizza-making related reasons, but being frustrated and tired wasn’t a good combo for the butler, so he passed out on the couch. 

Now though, not only were they out of pizza, but severely out of brainstorming steam. She looked at him, his eyes much darker underneath than before the night started. When he noticed her eyes on him, he stopped reading files and looked at her, her under-eye bags a mirror of his own. She was wearing one of his old academy sweatshirts, and her curly hair was pulled back into a low bun; she had a pencil perched in it to keep it intact. The blanket Bruce had given her was wrapped around her frame. 

His exhaustion came falling down on him when he focused on her, and without thinking twice he laid his head on her lap, bringing his arms around the blanket she wrapped herself in. He knew Selina would probably scoot away and let his body drop, but he really didn’t care. He was cold and tired, and she was bundled up warm in a blanket--it was a no brainer. She didn’t push away though, and instead, entangled her fingers in his dark hair. She chuckled.

“Why are you laughing at me?” Bruce murmured, looking up at her with half-lidded eyes. 

She rolled her eyes at him, smiling, “You’re up all night, you stay in one room, and then out of all the places to sleep in this entire mansion, you pick right here?”, she motioned to her lap. 

He shrugged, and closed his eyes, nuzzling his body into her upright frame, “Can you blame me?”

Her heart leaped, “No,” she said, “your ‘night off’ didn’t exactly go the way we planned anyways.” He took a breath in after she said that, lifting his head up off her lap, he was facing her now. 

“Selina, I’m sorry,” He sounded more remorseful than ever. She should know, I mean, he’d apologized to her countless times, but this time it sounded almost pleading. Whenever Bruce had a hard time expressing his feelings, he’d just always apologize, and it annoyed the hell out of her. She only later realized the nuance behind any apology, sometimes it meant “Please, help me” and other times it meant “I’m about to do something stupid!”. One time it meant “I love you”, but neither of them had acknowledged that, and if they couldn’t do it during the day, then they definitely couldn’t do it after an all-nighter. 

This type of apology was foreign to her though, it felt almost broken, or maybe it was just the exhaustion getting to her. Selina placed a hand on either side of his face, and when she looked him in the eye she realized. Fear. She began to realize the whole reason they stayed up was because of how fearful Bruce was for the future. 

Without thinking twice Selina whispered, “It’s scary, I know,” Bruce put his hand over hers.

“Death and destruction,” Bruce sighed, referring to the image of Gotham that Ra’s had etched into his brain “and I’m to be reborn from it?” He looked at the floor, “What’s going to happen to me?”

She lifted his chin up, “Nothing,” She said firmly, “you fight the best you can, whenever you can, okay? Because your heart, no matter the circumstance, is always in the right place.”

Bruce was looking at her again, and because she always knew what to say to him, and because sleepiness looked beautiful on Selina, he kissed her, and it was the only conclusion either of them came to that night. When they pulled apart, the morning sun began to crack through the blinds in the Manor’s office, and they heard the gears turning on the waking city beneath them. 

The two teens were quiet though, smiling to themselves, and Bruce laid his head back on her lap, entangling his arms with hers, and melting into her frame. He was thinking how he could stay there forever, before he succumbed to sleep. Selina quietly sat there, fingering through Bruce’s hair and listening to the rise and fall of his breathing, until it slowed down to a soft snore. She felt her own eyelids grow heavy, and soon fell asleep, warmed by Bruce’s presence.


End file.
